Curated Bodies 1996

Gender Hacking — Robert Nelson

Combining images in a single work of art isn’t new in the history of art. Centuries before collage assisted the subversive spatial contrivances of modernism, images were deliberately placed beside one another in early Renaissance altarpieces. Within fabulous ornamental architectonic frameworks, dynamic correspondences between pictures argued the pious poetry of doctrine. Normally, there’s a central iconic image of the Virgin who presides majestically; she’s attended by saints to the side and by smaller narrative pictures beneath (the predelle) which elaborated the history or significance of the Mother of Christ.… Continued

Faking It: Notes on Interpretation — Anne Marsh

Anne Marsh

John Tagg argues that “for most people, photography is primarily a means of obtaining pictures of faces they know” (35). This activity makes photography ” a middle brow art” in Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis: a democratic image making process which affirms social stereotypes. Photography becomes an active agent “in the collective fantasy of family cohesion” (Krauss 19), and so the study of photography becomes a kind of sociology of identity and all the misconnaissance that this entails.… Continued